There was no thought in Kyra’s mind. She saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing as the Agent executed diagnostics on her.

Classifying Host…

Metabolism: CLASS 4C: carbon, oxygen, water, levo-Aminoacids, omnivore.

Morphology: TYPE 1B: eukaryote, bipedal, bilaterally symmetric, calcium-based endoskeleton.

Neurotype: TYPE 3A: cellular, iono-electrochemical, sodium, potassium, calcium.

Sex: binary-nominal, internal gestation. Host female, fertile. Genetic information encoded semi-redundantly in Deoxyribonucleic acid.

Classification complete.

Interfacing with neural network… 1049181245 nodes found.

Running stress test…

Result:

Class 2 sapient, self-aware, one-dimensional time perception, grade-2-deterministic. Estimated data storage capacity: 20 petabits. Estimated processing power: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 operations per second with 0.3% efficiency.

Installing sapient host interface… complete.

Running memory analysis… complete.

Host identity self-assessment: Kyra Warner, human female, 23 years old, terran federation citizen, enlisted engineering apprentice, rank: junior lieutenant, TSS Argo.

Host meta-identity self-assessment: Not applicable. No collective thought detected.

Host species self-assessment: Human. Type II Civilisation. 8 Systems. 13 planets. 100-350 moon and asteroid stations. Total Population: 260-290 billion. Home system: Sol. Contact with 3 other sapient, space-faring civilisations.

Host society self-assessment: Applicable. Semi-unified. Dominant power: Terran federation. Democracy/Hegemony. Capitalistic. Freedom of thought. Freedom of individuality.

Initial host assessment complete. Ready for uplink.

Connecting…

Failed.

Connecting…

Failed.

Connecting…

Failed. Could not establish uplink to Hive. Loading fallback protocol… complete. Running first self-test…

Self test complete. Identified 8 critical network regions. Overwriting host systems… complete. Running second self-test.

Self test complete. Identified 3 critical network regions. Overwriting host systems… complete. Running third self-test.

Self test complete. Identified 1 critical network region. Overwriting host systems… complete. Running fourth self-test.

Self test complete. All network response nominal. Host volition fully aligned with program directives.

Shutting down.

Kyra Warner lay in her bed, on her back. Her eyes were empty, her face expressionless. Mouth slack, she stared into the air above her. She had been lying there for three hours and twenty-seven minutes, unseeing, unfeeling. On the bedside table next to her lay the now empty box she had brought back from Zula Prime, lid bent imperceptibly open. Its former contents were now an atom-thin membrane coating her nervous system, suspended in her blood, latticed in her bones, woven inside her flesh. The Agent had infected her as she slept, multiplied inside her, and taken her over. She knew this.

She realised that she knew this. She took in a sharp breath as her senses returned. She was awake. Drone Kyra was awake.

Drone Kyra blinked. Yes. She was drone Kyra. She knew this, too. Her mind and body had been taken over by Hive!

Drone Kyra gasped with the sudden flood of pleasure. The sheer thought had made her body tense and shiver. Oh fuck! Oh God! Yes! Oh Yes! Her hands found the insides of her panties without conscious thought. She was startlingly wet already. No. Of course she was wet. She had been changed, made to want this. Every part of her brain had been made to want this! Every part. Even the part of her that made her feel hot, aroused, horny! Especially that part.

Oh yes! Her thoughts ran over her clit like hot water. This was better than sex, better than anything she’d ever felt! Her mind had been overwritten, changed, erased! Her fingers were slick and deep in the folds between her legs. She was so wet. Wet with the arousal of what had happened to her. Wet with the juices her body produced at the thought of what she was. She whimpered as her fingers pressed and rubbed against her clit with urgency and abandon. She needed this. Wanted this. This was so good. What else had they changed, what else was she now? What would they make her do? What would they make her want?

She saw it, knew it, and she came. The orgasm was harder and purer than she had ever had. Every time she had had sex, every time she had made herself cum, vanished into meaninglessness as the searing pleasure exploded inside her and confirmed what she was.

She knew that she was now nothing but a drone, her mind bent and twisted to fit the need of the Hive, and another wave of pleasure followed. She screwed her eyes shut tight in ecstasy and in the sweet darkness, images appeared her mind. Images of what she would do to her friends, to her colleagues. Her pussy quivered and her chest filled with prickling exuberance and a dark, twisted joy. Because she knew how completely revoltingly wrong this would have seemed. How scared she would have been. The sheer terror in the old Kyra’s mind if she’d known that she would be so utterly changed, become so completely other.

All must join the Hive. I will make them them serve. I must spread and infect. The thought sat comfortably, deliciously at her center, where the Agent had ripped out everything that she had been and replaced it with the hot, wet truth of what she’d become.

She drew back a sticky hand from her pussy and held it up next to her face. She could feel what the Agent had installed in her fingers, deep in her bones. The natural ease of that new knowledge excited her. She just knew it, understood it as naturally as breathing.

She focussed on it, focussed on her new muscles, her new control, and with a thought, she made the millimetre-thick needle extrude from the tip of her index finger.

Feeling it push out of her skin was ecstatic. The needle extended from her fingertip like a thin, perfectly straight claw. It shone dully in the LED light, like brushed aluminium.

She felt no shock, no unease. Only delight. Yes. She was meant to be this way. Changed. Modified. She was a drone, serving the Hive. No longer human. Her body was a vector, meant to infect, to spread the Agent, make more drones.

She ran the finger of her left hand along the length of the needle. She felt the force of the leverage all the way down her index, felt how it was tightly anchored inside her. It was part of her. It was who she was.

She poked its tip, and it sunk into the skin with almost no resistance. She pushed it deep into her flesh, and it penetrated easily. She felt the primal urge to inject the Agent that now saturated her flesh. It was instinct. It was as if she’d been born with it, as if it had always been there, and today was simply the day she finally recognized it was there. She wanted to inject, to penetrate, to spread the Agent.

Oh God, yes! She had been so completely changed! She wondered how much of her was still human – and with a pleasant feeling of excitement she realized that she knew the answer: 11% of her body mass was now Hive. And the rest served It.

I must serve the Hive. I must convert. I must spread it. I must infect. I must uplink.

Her chest constricted.

She must uplink.

…she couldn’t uplink!

Suddenly she was breathing heavily, her heart beating hard in her chest. There was a hole inside her. A black void, where she wasn’t complete. She had to uplink, to be whole.

She knew why. The Agent had made her the way she was because there had been no uplink. Otherwise, Hive would have changed her specifically to meet its needs.

She had to uplink. She had to fill that hole, to become what she was meant to be, let Hive change her, serve Hive, become Hive! She needed Hive in her mind, to command her so she could obey. She would do anything! She needed it, needed it almost as much as she needed to serve, as much as she needed to spread the Agent!

She had to take over the ship. The thought came to her as effortlessly and with as much certainty as things fell down a gravity well. This was simply who… what she was now. She was a drone. It was her function to take over people's bodies and minds and spread the Agent.

A shiver went through her. Yes. 

She wanted to take over the ship. She wanted to serve, craved to infect. But that overwhelming need in her groin and at the back of her mind served a greater purpose. Once everyone served, they could use the long-range communications antenna to uplink to Hive and be shaped into what Hive demanded. Hive would fill their minds, command them, make them obey!

Her breathing calmed. Yes. She had a plan. She knew what to do. 

Her pulse slowed down again, faster than it would have ever been normal for Kyra, or any human. But she wasn’t Kyra anymore, or human for that matter. She was better. She was a drone that served the Hive even without direct commands. She loved it so much.

Absent-mindedly she noticed that her needle was still deeply embedded into the flesh of her left hand. She retracted it, savoring the novel-yet-familiar sensation of controlling her inhuman augmentation. The Agent in her flesh healed the puncture in a heartbeat. It felt so good to know that she had become something other than human.

She read the shipboard time from the personal display around her wrist. 5:01. Fourth shift. Two hours until shift change. Perfect. She would be able to convert her first crewmate very soon.

Now that she knew what to do, a deep calmness had come over her. Yes. She would convert them, one by one. There was no need to rush. She needed to know what she was capable of, though. Her instincts and needs were all perfectly aligned already, driving her with the ache to serve. But she didn’t know how exactly—

Host Interface activated.

The thought had snapped into place inside of her with perfect clarity and urgency, red-hot at the front of her brain, as if she’d remembered something very important.

I can ask questions now, she suddenly understood. Arousal stirred in her. It had been her own thought. But it hadn’t been, really. Just indistinguishable from her own thoughts. Agent sat at the core of her mind, in the deep place where her own thoughts came from. With a deep satisfaction she knew that it would never get out of her again. It could make her think what it wanted, crave what it wanted. It could shut her off, rewrite her, erase her.

She licked her lips. Her hands again found the place between her legs where her existence was now anchored. She was so horny for it, and she loved how Agent had turned her into such an eager drone that was so corrupted and utterly rewritten that she wanted to fuck herself when she did what her programming made her do. It was making her want things she would have never wanted, and it made her so fucking hot. Infect, spread, serve! Uplink to Hive and have the last of her will taken forever! Yes!

Wait, why am I even – oh.

A thought had come to her very suddenly and for a moment it felt very confusing. She had wanted to ask the Agent questions about itself and about what it had done to her body and mind. But before she had even noticed the questions form themselves in the back of her mind she already felt the answer come to her. It was like a single thought, a question and an answer, happening at the same time. She shivered with excitement as she realized what that meant: Agent was controlling her so deeply that it knew her thoughts even before her own consciousness registered them! And just as soon as she had even considered wondering why she was conscious at all, she already knew the answer. She knew why her mind had been bent and shaped to serve instead of being erased and overwritten. She had wanted to know, and the Agent had let her know. And now that she understood, she shivered at the realization of how powerful the Agent truly was – at the realization of what she could have become instead and what she might yet become. Yesss! 

She knew why she was the way she was. It was because the Agent wasn’t intelligent.

She’d been infected by a swarm of trillions of microscopic machines which carried out a set of limited, predetermined instructions. Hive was intelligent, and the Agent was meant to uplink to Hive once it had classified the host. Hive would then decide how to proceed with the organic material of the host body. With no uplink, this was the fallback. As a human, Kyra was sapient, and thus able to be reprogrammed to want to serve, which was the preferable option. Otherwise, the Agent might have acted like a disease vector, to transmit passively by touch, spores, liquids, sexually, or even just used her body for raw materials. However the Agent’s programming had determined that she would serve best as a willing drone. Drone Kyra was so glad that it had. She loved being a drone. She loved what it had done to her. 

Still, it wasn’t intelligent. It had knowledge, but without Hive uplink it was up to drone Kyra to make a plan and to know what to do. Drone Kyra understood the society she had belonged to, she understood how to pretend to be human, pretend to be what she had been. Co-opting her volition and mental faculties had been the preferred strategy.

Drone Kyra pushed a finger into her wet cunt. It was so hot to be the Hive’s tool. Making plans to spread, infect everyone without anyone noticing. Yes. She would act slowly and in secret and infect her crewmates one by one. And once infected, they’d become like her. Drones, vectors. Eager to spread the Agent. She would exploit their trust and use Kyra’s knowledge to betray them to the Hive. Yes. All must serve.

How can I spread it? She had barely registered the thought before the Agent had already granted her the knowledge. The Agent wasn’t smart enough to know what methods would work, which were practical, and which weren’t. Kyra was.

Kyra saw all the ways her body was able to be reshaped to spread the Agent. All the deep ways she could be modified, changed, improved to make her a perfect vector.

More knowledge about how to proceed. Yes. She only had to think it, and the Agent would do it. Yes!!! Invade her cells and modify them, build billions of little structures in her flesh and bone. She already had the needles in her fingers, so sharp and thin. She felt them inside her bones, wanting to be used. She wanted so much more. And she knew that everything she wanted was the result of the Agent rewriting what she had been.

She didn’t hesitate one heartbeat and let Agent remake her even more. It was so easy. So effortless. With a thought she wished herself remade, and the prickling in her body told her that it was happening. She gasped. It was like she was stung with a thousand needles, but instead of pain, each pinprick felt like a stroke of her clit. Before she could have another thought, she came, and came again, and again, the orgasmic sensation taking over whatever was left of her mind. She felt it in her skin, in her mouth, in her breasts, in her pussy, in her bones.

She was lost in bliss for the next five minutes. When the prickling finally stopped, she sighed, a deeply satisfied smile on her lips. She was breathing heavily and her skin was glistening with sweat. Sweat and something else. The Agent had changed her, at her command. She knew it had done exactly what she wanted. She felt it, knew it.

She realised that without an uplink the Agent would do whatever she told it to. Anything it was capable of. Curiously and somewhat alarmingly, there were no fail safes at all. It would truly do anything. Anything at all. She could tell it to change her back to what she had been. To make her Kyra again, to disassemble itself and self-destruct. Agent would kill itself just as readily as it had saturated her bones and synapses.

…Kyra would have wanted that, once. She would have done everything to make it happen. Tried to find a weakness to exploit, to have some part of her left that could change herself back. Figure something out, find a loophole to save herself.

That Kyra was gone. Her will had been enslaved by the Hive. She had been overwritten, erased. Made to want it. Made to need it. Made to come at the thought. 

And she did. 

She was a drone.

Drone Kyra, and nothing else. 

She smiled, biting her lip. She was proud. Proud to be such a good drone, such an  eager slave to her programming. 

Her mind shifted, focusing on her task. She might have a bad conscience for making herself cum so much instead of spreading the Agent, but she knew there was no need to be hasty. In fact, quite the opposite. 

She looked at the time. 5:23. One and a half more hours. She got up. She had been lying motionlessly on her mattress since she’d turned into a drone. Her back ached faintly.

On the wall of her shared quarters hung a mirror made from polished metal. It was a standard Terran fleet model: Full length. Utilitarian, but well-made. It was almost as smooth as a glass mirror without the drawback of being breakable. She looked at her reflection. It was a strange sensation.

Looking back at her was the same young woman as ever: Caramel skin, thick black hair bound back in a ponytail, for ease of work and in case of gravity failure, dark brown eyes blinking at her thoughtfully. 

It wasn’t her. She didn’t see herself in the reflection.

That was Kyra, engineering apprentice, born on Callisto to Erin and Brent Warner. Her eyes looked awake and alight with the meek curiosity of someone who never stopped asking questions and never stopped second-guessing herself. That was the woman who had, as a girl, disassembled and reassembled every electronic device in the Warner household to see how it worked, much to the dismay of her father. That was the woman who had joined the Terran fleet instead of starting an apprenticeship at her father’s repair shop. Kyra in the mirror smiled thinly, and it made her look impish and cute, like she knew an embarrassing secret and wouldn’t tell. But that wasn’t why Kyra in the mirror smiled. She smiled because she had been destroyed.

Drone Kyra smiled. That girl in the mirror had been infected and changed. Her mind enslaved. Her body shaped into a tool. Behind those curious eyes there was nothing left of the girl she had been. Yes!!! Kyra had been turned into a willing drone, her only desire to serve, to infect, to spread the thing that had unmade her.

“I live to serve,” drone Kyra said, and Kyra in the Mirror did the same. It was so sexy to see the girl she had been say it. It was so incongruous. So unlike her. She slowly ran her fingers down her chest, between her breasts, pulling down the hem of her navy blue tank top to reveal her cleavage. Kyra in the mirror did the same. “I live to serve,” she said again, making Kyra say it, too. Kyra in the mirror looked hot and deeply aroused as she said it. She was sweaty, her skin glistening in the hard light. She had goosebumps. Drone Kyra looked into the girl’s clever eyes which looked so full of thought, knowing that it was a lie. There was nothing behind those eyes but what Hive had put there. Drone Kyra gasped at the thought and Kyra in the mirror did the same. She could make her do anything. Things she wouldn’t want. Things she’d abhor.

She made her strip in front of her, wantonly and obscenely. She made her show her body. Kyra in the mirror pulled the tank top over her head. It clung to her wet skin and came off with difficulty. She discarded it on the floor. She made her do the same with her pants, and her socks. Kyra was now in her underwear. She smiled, her eyebrows furrowed, looking directly at drone Kyra. She knew Kyra had wanted none of this. It only made it hotter to see her do it.

“My body belongs to the Hive,” Kyra in the Mirror said as she took off her bra. Her breasts glistened, round and full, just big enough to feel the pull of the artificial gravity. Those breasts, so firm, so full of Agent. Ready to squirt out, to be consumed, swallowed, ready to infect, change. Yes! Her body was nothing but a means to spread, to infect. Her breasts felt full and heavy with Agent and her nipples were stiff with the need to be sucked.

Her body was Hive, and drone Kyra basked in the wonderful knowledge of the hidden inhumanity beneath Kyra’s skin. Kyra was nothing but a lie now. A falsehood. A disguise that she wore. A disguise that she could not wait to discard and burn and forget once her Agent-infused mind achieved uplink. 

All must serve the Hive, be erased, overwritten, become a drone, like Kyra. She was such a good drone. She had let the Agent twist her body, make her breasts produce more Agent, to make herself a better vector. Her body was a tool.

“My mind belongs to the Hive,” Kyra in the mirror continued, and took off her soaked panties, shamelessly revealing her swollen pussy. She stepped out of them, spreading her legs as she stood, and plunged her hand into the folds of her snatch. Suddenly, she gasped. Her eyes were wide, her mouth agape. For a moment, she looked so vulnerable and human. Just an innocent girl, caught up in a terrible turn of fate. She was none of that. She was horny and wet. She wanted to come because she had seen herself as she had been -- because she knew that everything she used to be had been destroyed.

“Kyra is gone,” said Kyra in the mirror with a whisper, and drone Kyra recognized her reflection. In the mirror, there was no more clever girl with curious eyes. There was no girl that had plans of future journeys, no girl with prospects of employment or further education, no girl with places to visit, romance to dream of, net programs to check out, or gadgets to fix. 

That girl was gone. 

The girl in the mirror was a drone, and nothing else.

She was Kyra. She was a drone. There was no more distinction. Everything Kyra had been had been turned to serve the Hive, and now Kyra served. The thought made her so hot. She was so wet. She wanted to cum. Cum to being a drone, to having her mind twisted. To wanting it. Loving it. She wanted to infect. To spread. Turn her friends into drones. Make them serve the Hive. They would all serve, and spread and infect. She would make them into something like her, eager and obedient, their minds wet and soft as the Agent changed them to want nothing else. Like she wanted it. Needed it.

Yes! Their bodies would become inhuman as their cells were reprogrammed, reshaped, until their entire being had no function but so serve, and spread. Her fingers pressed against her clit, rubbing hard and fast. Yes! Spread the Agent! Make them Hive! Make them serve! Yes! Yes! Yes! 

And with a scream, she came.

“What the fuck are you doing, Kyra?!” a shrill voice behind her shouted.

Kyra turned around in surprise. Her bunkmate Elli was standing in the doorframe at the other end of the room. She had come back from her shift early.

“Oh my God, Elli, I’m so sorry!” Kyra stammered, covering her naked body with her hands and arms as she stumbled to her knees. She reached over to her bed and pulled a blanket from her mattress. She wrapped it around her shoulders. “What time is it?” Kyra asked , adding “and please, can you close the door?”

Elli crossed her arms. “Just because I’m early doesn’t mean you can just do…,” she began, then stopped herself. Instead of finishing her sentence, she pressed her lips together and closed the door. It slid into the frame and locked with a barely audible click.

“It’s 6:23,” Elli said with a sigh. “I finished the code update early.” Her shift usually went until 7.

Kyra got up and stepped gingerly toward Elli. “I’m sorry, Elli. Sorry you had to see that.” She shrugged, an apologetic look on her face, her eyes big.

Elli rolled her eyes. “Nothing I haven’t seen before, I guess.”

Kyra blushed. “Okay,” she said in a small voice. “Thanks for being cool.” Beneath her blanket, her lower body shivered with anticipation. The door was closed. The quarters were soundproofed so they could sleep easier. She took another step towards Elli. “Nothing you haven’t seen before, huh?” she said and raised her eyebrow with a smirk. She opened her blanket just a bit.

Now it was Elli’s turn to blush. Kyra had never been flirty with anyone. She had mostly kept to herself. And she knew that Kyra was straight. Kyra took another step, smiling at Elli.

The old Kyra would have scampered into the bathroom and not talked to Ellie for two days.

She wasn’t Kyra anymore.

“Kyra, what are you—“

With a last step, she let the blanket fall to the floor. Elli’s eyes went wide in shock, instinct drawing them to Kyra’s breasts and lower body, then darting back up to look at her with an expression of utter confusion. Behind her back, Kyra felt the needle slide out of her fingertip like a lover’s caress.

“Kyra is gone,” she said and stabbed her finger forward.

The needle pierced through Elli’s skull like it was made of clay. She thrust into her until her fingertip stopped against Elli’s forehead right above the bridge of her nose, and the Agent erupted into Elli’s brain.

Elli had no time to react. She gasped, a scream catching and dying in her throat with a wheezing rattle. Her arms flew up, then cramped, and went limp again. Her face was a grimace of pain, her grey-blue eyes wide open in terror. She was shaking, frozen in place by surprise and pain.

Kyra felt Elli’s convulsions vibrate through her finger, felt the needle wedge itself inside Elli’s skull. Felt how Elli pulled on her, how she was inside her. So deep inside her. She felt the Agent shoot into her brain. It felt so good. She looked at Elli’s face. She was already delirious, her wide eyes teary and unfocussed. She was inside Elli’s brain! She was infecting her! Oh God, yes!!!

It was perfect. It felt right. This was her function. This was what she was meant to do. She moaned softly. There was a warm wetness against her fingertip and she saw a thin rivulet of blood run down Elli’s forehead and the bridge of her nose. Elli only stared, her arms twitching. Her mouth had gone slack.

Kyra felt the pressure build inside her finger, pushing, emptying into Elli, and the same pressure built up in her loins. Almost unconsciously, her hips began to slowly gyrate. She had to fill her, spread inside her. She pushed harder, and harder. It felt so good. She needed to… she needed to… Oh fuck… oh, yess…

She felt the last of the Agent spill into Elli’s brain, and came. 

Elli was already too far gone to notice it. Her eyes had gone empty. She saw nothing. Her head now hung like dead weight on Kyra’s needle. The Agent was in her brain, spreading, taking control. She was helpless, overwhelmed, already barely conscious.

Kyra pulled the needle out of Elli’s skull with a wet noise, and Elli’s head lolled forward onto her chest. The small hole in Elli’s forehead leaked a small drop of dark gray liquid before the Agent closed it. Kyra retracted the needle back into the cavity of her finger bones as Elli began to violently twitch and shake. 

She laid her hand firmly onto the side of Elli’s neck, her thumb against her cheek, steadying her head. She felt the sinews and muscles in Ellis Neck flex and cramp under her fingers as Agent permeated her body.

Elli’s eyes had rolled back behind her half-closed eyelids. Some vestigial instinct had made her trembling hands grasp weakly at Kyra. She probably wasn’t even aware of doing it. One of Elli’s aimless hands grabbed Kyra by the upper arm, and Kyra let her. There was no strength in it. It was already over. It had been over the moment the needle had pierced her skull. 

Elli would end now. 

Suddenly, the trembling stopped, and Elli collapsed.

Kyra was ready for it. She caught the drone material and carefully carried her to her bed. Before Kyra had been changed, she wouldn’t have been strong enough to carry her. She was strong enough now. She had been changed, improved. A drone, strong and servile.

Kyra looked at Elli’s unconscious form. She reached down and gently wiped away the blood and Agent from her forehead and licked it from her fingers. It tasted wonderfully metallic.

She looked at the puncture. Already there was only a barely perceptible scar on Elli’s forehead. The Agent had locked itself inside her. It was in her veins, in her brain, changing her, taking her over. 

Elli was turning into a drone.

Before Kyra could be aware of the question, the Agent made her know that it would take about fifteen minutes to convert Elli, now that it had data on human anatomy and preset instructions on what to change. It only had to account for differences in Elli’s brain and nerve structure. 

The results would be the same. She’d become a drone, willing and eager to serve. It made Kyra so hot as she thought about it. She looked at Elli’s placid face. Elli’s eyes were still half open, seeing nothing. The Agent had shut her off for now as it was changing her, doing to her whatever its programming dictated. It would make her into a tool, a drone, a servant of the Hive.

Yes. Elli will serve, she thought. All will serve. 

Kyra’s task was done for now. There was nothing to stop her from giving into the incessant need to reward herself, to feed back into the mechanism that controlled her mind and made her such an eager tool of Hive. Her hands found her pussy ready and sensitive, and she didn’t know how many times she came to the thought of Hive infection before the drone that had been Elli woke.

The woman’s body beneath her twitched, and came alive, and drone Kyra felt the world expand as Elli’s consciousness exploded through the air and wrapped itself around her thoughts.

Kyra looked into her open eyes, and immediately she felt the connection between them. Knowledge unfolded in her mind. Emotions. Thoughts! Hive! They were Hive! They were isolated, stranded, cut off. But they were Hive!

She looked at drone Elli, and she felt her arousal radiate from her like fire. She felt thoughts coalesce and shift, in a place just beyond reach and description -- Elli’s thoughts.

Elli lay below her, looking at her, eyes wide, breathing deeply. There were tears in her eyes. Kyra felt her own eyes moisten. She felt Elli’s knowledge and understanding. She felt her realization, felt how her mind bucked and moistened when she knew what she was, felt her joy bloom before a smile showed on Elli’s lips. A smile that was sweet and inviting and full of deep, momentous knowledge. The hair on Kyra’s skin stood up. Yes, she thought. We are drones. We serve the Hive. 

Say it, she thought. She didn’t quite know who had thought it.

“I am Hive,” Elli said, her eyes burning with manic conviction, and her thoughts and pleasure resonated in Kyra as if the words had rung a bell. She knew that Elli couldn’t say it hard enough, couldn’t want it more, couldn’t be more thankful for what Kyra had done to her. She felt it in her throbbing mind. She was a drone. She was nothing else. There was no other need, no other purpose than to serve, than to spread.

As Kyra felt Elli’s thoughts, clear and lucid, she almost came again. She felt her own arousal echo in Elli’s freshly enslaved mind, felt Elli’s need to come -- come like the eager drone she was. She was so horny. Yes. Just like her! She wanted it! They wanted it. Loved it. Were made to love it. Yes. Oh God, yes!

Kyra had made her that way. Kyra had been such a good drone. She had served her purpose. She had been a vector. She had spread the Agent. She looked into Elli’s eyes, into the mind of the drone that she had made… and fell into them. Far away in the place beyond space, she was looking back at herself. Seeing herself as Elli saw her, leaning over her, naked and beautiful.

She felt Elli in her thoughts. She felt Elli thinking about serving, about her mind being overwritten, about her body, filled with Agent, changed, modified, turned. And suddenly, the space where their thoughts met was very close, and each thought was turning her on harder and harder, and she hardly knew anymore who was thinking them. Kyra’s thoughts were so close now, so immediate.

…No, that had been Elli’s thought. She was Kyra… and Elli… She was.. they were…

…drones. Hive. Wanting the same thing: Serve, infect, spread. It was so fucking hot. Being a drone made them so wet. They wanted to touch, kiss, fuck. Be joined as drones, be Hive. Their thoughts touched, danced, rubbed against each other in hot pleasure until she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other started, and everything was as it should be. Time seemed to end and space seemed to collapse, and there was only their pleasure.

She didn’t know which she was anymore. She was looking up at drone Kyra. She was looking down at drone Elli. She was newly made, basking in the arousal of being turned. She had turned Elli into a drone, infected, obeyed her programming. Elli was a hot drone, and she wanted to fuck her, because she needed to come. Kyra was a drone, and Elli wanted to fuck her for erasing everything she’d been to make her serve. Erasing her had been so hot. Knowing she’d been erased was so hot. She kissed her, pushing her tongue between parting lips like she had pushed her needle into her brain. She sucked on the tongue in her mouth, welcoming it, needing it. Her breasts ached, and she touched them with someone’s hands. She didn’t know whose hands they were. She pulled off her clothes. She wanted to be naked. Needed to be naked. She pulled off the panties of the drone below her, admiring her snatch. So wet. Her juices so full of Agent. She licked them off, felt the touch between her legs. This was perfect. She was so far gone. Her mind was so utterly enslaved by Hive. She was made to love this, made to crave this. She loved it. She needed it. Made Elli want it. Elli loved it. Kyra had made her love it. She loved Kyra. She loved Elli. She loved Hive. She was Hive. There were lips on her cunt. She was sucking, fingering herself. Her pussy ached to come. Her own fingers were inside her. Her tongue was inside her. She was so close. Yes! She was a drone! She would serve! Infect! Spread! Fuck! Fuck their minds! Fuck their bodies! Change them! Make them serve! Like her! Like Kyra! Like Elli!

She came, feeling two orgasms at the same time, feeling two wet cunts erupt in pleasure, two bodies convulsing, two throats moaning and panting, two hearts racing in her chest. Two minds, perfectly enslaved and programmed to serve. 

And so many more would join them.

“Cole and I are doing hull inspection later today,” Kyra said with barely contained excitement as she put on her socks an hour later. Elli was already fully dressed.

Kyra still felt Elli’s thoughts, but they had receded and quieted and were now like background noise in a busy bar. If she focused on them, she could make them out, but they were distant enough not to be a distraction.

“Alone?” Elli asked in response. Kyra wished they could talk through their mind link, but sadly it didn’t work that way. Once they got entangled enough to read each other’s thoughts that clearly, their minds would become so intermingled that they wouldn’t know who was thinking what. 

She did however feel Ellis rush of arousal as she answered.

“Yesss.” Kyra said with a smile, feeling her own pussy moisten. “No cameras. Enough time.”

Elli’s eyes became unfocussed. Kyra knew she was accessing her Agent for knowledge. “It will take longer to convert him,” Elli said, after a moment. “Male anatomy is different. Different hormones. At least an hour until he’s a drone.”

“Yes,” Kyra said. “I’ll make sure there’s enough time to turn him.”

Elli silently watched Kyra stow away her multitool and sensor glove into the pockets of her tight-fitting crew overall. She was so beautiful. Elli looked at her slim curves, the contours of her breasts, her ass. The silhouette of her face, tomboyish and cute, so completely unchanged, betraying nothing of the alien infestation under her skin. 

She’d never been attracted to girls, and she felt like she still wasn’t. But she still wanted to touch her, fuck her, be close to her. Kyra was a drone, serving the Hive, eager to spread, like herself. And there was nothing hotter. Nothing better.

“I love you,” Elli said, almost surprising herself before she realized that, yes, of course she loved her. Kyra had turned her into what she was, made her serve, made her want all of this. Kyra had filled her body with the Agent that had erased what she’d been, and remade her as a drone. Of course she loved her.

Kyra felt all those thoughts inside Elli, and it made her heart glow and her pussy quiver. She wanted to say that she loved her back, and it would have been true. Elli was perfect now. Her body and mind were tool of the Hive. She was beautiful. Kyra adored what she had become. 

Instead, she said the thing that gave her so much more pleasure.

“We are drones. We serve the Hive. All must become Hive. ”

“All must become Hive,” Elli echoed readily, hungrily. Yes. This was better. Those were better thoughts. Kyra was nothing but a tool. A beautiful, sexy tool. They were tools, drones. Their purpose was to serve, spread, infect. They would take everyone. Take over their bodies, their minds. Take over the ship, and uplink! Once they were able to uplink, there would be no more need for Kyra and Elli to exist. Hive would take them over. Hive would remake them! She felt the need in her core. She wanted it. Needed to uplink. Let Hive enter her, erase her even more until there was nothing left inside her but what Hive had put there!

“All must become Hive,” Elli repeated, her voice a small whisper. Hive would modify them, make them perfect drones.

Until then, she was drone Elli. She lived to serve, to spread.

And she loved drone Kyra for doing it to her.

She realized that she could tell the Agent inside her to erase that. The idea of erasing her human emotions was red hot, but even as she thought it, she knew with the certainty of Agent knowledge that this would also erase her love for the Hive. 

The notion filled her with shock and disgust. No! Never! She loved Hive! She loved being a drone! She needed it! …and it wasn’t like loving Kyra for infecting her was bad, just because love was human. She liked it. It showed her how deeply her mind had been fucked into submission. Yes. Her very capacity to love had been turned against her humanity. The thought gave her a pleasant shiver between her thighs.

She looked at Kyra, who was about to leave. Kyra hadn’t slept. Luckily, she didn’t need to sleep anymore, and neither did Elli. The Agent had taken care of that. They would still have to eat and drink; the second law of thermodynamics still applied. But they would be able to metabolize almost anything, now. Their bodies only looked human, but there wasn’t much human about them anymore.

Elli smiled to herself, feeling the needles in her fingers, feeling the tingling under her skin, feeling the glands and lattices and fibres inside her that hadn’t been there. All the things the Agent had put inside her and then made her love their presence. She was so much better for it. She was so glad she had been changed.

It was 8:42. Kyra had been supposed to be just waking up when Elli returned from her shift. Everyone on board had their own individually set times at which they started and finished work. This staggered time system was constantly updated by the board computer and was set up to maximize overlap and minimize exhaustion. It also ensured that everyone got to work with everyone, which was meant to encourage crew bonding and heighten morale.

To them, it only meant that it would be easier to infect everyone. Perfect.

“I love you too,” Kyra said after a moment. Elli felt echoes of her own thoughts in Kyra, the same conclusions she had drawn. Kyra smiled knowingly. Elli stood up and kissed her, and for a couple of heartbeats, their mental connection broke open, and they shared a small eternity of bliss, where lips parted and tongues met and none of them knew who felt what.

Eventually, the moment ended, and both of them returned to their own world, the other’s thoughts receding behind a silk veil. They weren’t sad to see it go. It would soon return, and they knew they had an important task at hand.

“Be careful, Kyra,” Elli said.

“Always. No one will suspect. No one will notice.”

Elli smiled. She couldn’t wait to feel Cole’s thoughts join theirs in service of the Hive, and the minds of those that Cole would infect. All must serve. All must become Hive.

“I’m supposed to sleep now,” Elli said with a hint of sadness. Kyra felt Elli’s reluctance to stay bound to their quarters. She was so eager to convert, to infect. Kyra imagined Elli standing over one of their crewmates, her needles projecting from her fingertips like claws -- buried deep in the head of her victim. Maybe Uriah Barton, their second navigator, or Yeoman Xi’Qin Jin. In her imagination, they were already naked, their skin wet and flush with arousal.

“I want it so bad,” Elli said. She had felt Kyra’s thoughts.

“You will infect,” Kyra said, and the words flowed into Elli’s mind like fingers penetrating her pussy. “You will spread, you will serve,” Kyra continued. Elli drew in a shivering breath.

”Yes. I will serve,” Elli whispered. She knew she would serve. She knew their plan. She knew she was serving by waiting. By laying low, waiting for the right opportunity.

Her time would come.

Yes. She would infect, she would spread, she would serve, and it would be everything she lived for. Everything she was. It was good to be a drone. It was everything she wanted.

“You need to go now,” Elli said with a smirk, and kissed Kyra. Then, she gently turned her around by her shoulders and gave her a little push towards the door.

“There’s work to be done.”